Lot Line

Lot line adjustment has been completed, and has been recorded with the county.
Exciting stuff!

Driveway - Rough Grade

Today we passed the inspection for the "rough grade" driveway.  This meant we met the specifications for the cobble, road base thickness, as well as the culvert.  Yay!

Next up is the excavation for the shop.

Driveway - the beginnings

In order to build the shop / garage, we needed to put our driveway in.  It's been good to be able to start work on all these little things for the house.  If we didn't have approval for the shop, we would need to wait until we have approval for the house before beginning our driveway.

Our really nice friend that's an excavator let us borrow his mini excavator for the trench and for the driveway.  Wow.  Saved us thousands of dollars.

First we had marked out where the driveway was to run.
Next Scott began removing the organic layer (which is the grass and little bit of the roots).
He then scooped out another 8" or so of topsoil.

Beck and Scott on the excavator

Scott woke up this morning early (5:30am) and finished excavating the driveway.

The loads of 6-8" cobble began arriving around noon.

We needed 6 truckloads (each truckload held approximately 13 tons).

Next up will be the road base and gravel.

Site Work - Utilities

We needed to bring all utilities into the lot.  This required us to run 550' of conduit.  

A 3" (schedule 40) pipe for electrical, 

and 12" apart from that we laid,

A 1.5" (schedule  40) pipe for internet.

The electrical pipe couldn't have more than 3 - 90 degree sweeps, so we had to be careful how we ran the pipe.  It also required a 36" cover of fill from the pipe to grade level.

As luck would have it, when we started digging the trench, the nearby farmers began flood irrigating.  The trench quickly filled with water, and we were left with floating pipe...

The first solution was for me to STAND IN THE DITCH, and put my body weight on the pipe to hold it down.  

Why is it Scott's always on the tractor and I'm the one in the ditch?

I was down stream from where Scott would back fill, I wasn't in danger of being buried alive, but it was very unpleasant.  After a few hours, I started seeing dead mice floating near me.  That was it.  No more for me.  I went above and beyond my duty as a wife and mother and woman helper.  I like to think of myself as being as tough as a pioneer, but nope.  Not going to stand in the ditch with floating dead rigor mortis mice bumping into my legs.  That's where I draw the line.

So, we bought a water pump and pumped all that water out of the ditch.  Problem solved.

Best $275 spent thus far.

We opted for this pump from amazon and it is awesome.  

Came with great quality hoses as well.

Gibson and I holding down some pipe (the day before we saw any floating mice)

Silt Fencing

Before you can start any construction, you're required to put up a sediment control.  We basically had the option of straw wattle, or silt fencing.  

The straw wattle is a simpler process as you simply pound stakes into the ground so there's no daylight beneath the straw roll.  The issue I discovered was - hello?!  It's SO expensive!

I got on our local classified ads (love the KSL classifieds) to see if anyone was selling the straw or the silt fencing.  Coincidentally enough, I found an ad for silt fencing: 

Brand new - 100' rolls for $10 - in the city 3 miles up the road.  

I texted the guy and we met at Ken's Kash the next morning.  Ha ha ha.  We both started laughing as we saw eachother - we go to church together.  :)  

(the straw wattle would've ended up costing us around $1200, instead we paid $50)

We used the trench digger on the tractor to dig down about 8".

We then pounded the silt stakes into the ground.

It was a lot of work, but thankfully it was pretty cool weather, and we didn't hit many river rocks.

A few days later the boys had the job of backfilling the silt fence.  I was out of town, but they were sure to send me a picture of how dirty they got doing that job.  :)

The county engineer came out and inspected the silt fencing and passed it, so on to the next project...

Permit for detached shop / garage

We "need" a secondary garage.  Scott and I are project people.  He does a lot of woodworking...it's time he had a place to accomplish all his projects.

In this county, you can get a permit to build a detached garage (under 720 square feet, with no living quarters) fairly easily.  It took some work, but we decided we would get started on this garage while the house is still being approved...

This garage/shop will be 24' x 30'.

Basically the size of a 2 car garage

I was so happy at the county office when they put this paper into that plastic sleeve.  It's taken effort to pull this permit.  :)

Houseplans

Houseplans completed.

Ready to submit to the county!